Little Prince's Birth Story - Part 4

As I return to the telling of the story, this time I have nothing particularly deep to say as introduction. Knowing what to say and what to share, or what not to, is sometimes harder than I anticipated. I’ve written this blog and written about my kids and family for a long time. Yet in all that time I’m not sure that I’ve shared many things that have affected me so profoundly. Every one of my birthing experiences lives in my memory – with points of highlight that shine brightly in my mind – but this one, Little Prince’s birth, beats more strongly, its intensity blinding still and at times as fresh as though it were yesterday. Anyways... 

I lost track of all that was going on around me for a couple seconds here and there. I lost hold of Heli Dad’s hand as nurses, more than were originally present, surrounded me, and while at the same time the OB climbed right up on the bed with me. They worked together quickly for a couple minutes, shifting me this way and that physically trying to maneuver the baby still inside me to a better position for delivery, while at the same time stripping the soaked and bloody bedding from the mattress and pushing new linens underneath me. In the chaos, my husband and my mom were pushed back from the bed and I lost sight of them.

As the pain increased I struggled to remain aware of what was going on around me.

Then the OB was leaning over me, her face just inches from my own, her worried eyes staring into mine, and she was telling me that we were going to have to go to the OR and they were going to do a caesarian section. It’s weird when I think back to it now, but I remember clearly that when she leaned down to me her eyes were worried. I remember moaning “no” and starting to cry. I remember the feeling of my heart stopping – not literally, thank God, but that feeling of disbelief and suspended moment of shock. Or maybe it was more than that because in the next instant things got even more insane.

All of a sudden, literally the blink of an eye, there were alarms going off, nurses were yelling at one another and for more help. The OB was yelling for someone to call the OR to prep because we needed to move immediately. And they did. They didn’t wait, as they normally would have, for a smaller bed or gurney to more easily move me to the OR. One second the OB and a nurse were yelling that we had to go, now, that we couldn’t wait any longer, and in the next second the OB or one of the nurses just yanked all the leads from the machine (for the various monitors that were on me and the baby) and they were pushing my large, cumbersome delivery bed out the door.

As they rolled me down the hall a blanket was tossed over my lower half, to cover my mostly naked, blood and other fluid covered state. We burst out the delivery ward doors and I was rushed past the L&D waiting area – where my dad had been patiently waiting since we arrived hours earlier for the arrival of his newest grandchild – around a corner, down a short hall and through another door in to an OR prep room. By this point I was pretty out of it from the pain and honestly wasn’t tracking everything that was going on but there were a few things that caught my attention and planted themselves in my memory for later.

Phrases like “increasing maternal distress” and “weakening vitals.”

“Lost fetal vitals” and “potentially fatal” were others that reverberated in my mind.

I remember an anesthesiologist and an obstetrical surgeon quickly introducing themselves, though I can’t for the life of me remember their names. I remember someone explaining to me what they were going to do and the sound of metal on metal. I remember being moved from my delivery bed to another gurney with a thin mattress on it and being stripped of what little I was still wearing. I remember a comment about the blood.

I remember moving again, this time being wheeled into the operating room itself and turning my head from side to side and seeing (literally) dozens of people as I was again transferred, this time to an even narrower surgical table with no padding or cover, and the feeling of cold stainless steel against my shoulder blades.

I remember a breathing mask going over my face and instructions to breathe deeply.

The sound of blood dripping, and then of a bucket of water or some other solution being poured over my chest, stomach and legs.

The concern in someone’s voice that I should already be unconscious.

I remember someone telling me that they were going to take good care of me and my baby, and that everything was going to be okay.

And I remember a couple more random, scary things, and then nothing as I finally faded into oblivion.

I’ve known several people whose deliveries ended in emergency c-sections. I think the possibility of one is something that most every woman going into labor considers, and fears. I never imagined that I’d end up on that table and if I had (imagined it, I mean) I never would have imagined it happening as it did. I still get the shakes when I think about it too much. I still cry every time – especially as I write out the thoughts, memories and feelings that were going through me at the time. I know now, and I knew then, that the steps taken to this point were necessary. I know now, though I didn’t know or truly understand then, that many of the steps taken were life-saving.

But you know, even all that knowledge doesn’t diminish the fear, that bone-deep terror which I, Heli Dad, and my parents experienced at the time. 

When you look back, good or bad experience, does hindsight allow you to view the course of your child’s birth differently?